Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions Read Online Free PDF Page A

still blushed like that.
    “Let me guess,” he continues, encouraged.
“You are an international social worker on home leave. The
villagers have come to accept you as one of them. You bind the
wounds of the elders and teach the little ones to read.”
    He has tickled her fancy and made her laugh.
She’s the wooden doll released from enchantment under the kindly
touch of the master toymaker.
    “I’m so sorry to disappoint you,” she says
finally. “You’re not even close.”
    She’s a tech rep for Boeing Computer Services
recently transferred from Seattle. His attention wanders as she
describes her job in some detail. Should he tell her about his CIA
connections? No, she probably couldn’t handle it, not this early in
the relationship.
    “I’m a poet,” he says, knowing this will
explain his broken teeth and current menial employment. Women take
chances on poets. “I’m looking for a serious relationship with an
intelligent woman who will torture me and darn my socks.”
    “What a great line,” she says. “Have you had
any luck with it?”
    Her body language reads guarded but her smile
tells him everything he needs to know. Like him, a believer in love
at first sight. The underground faith, the old religion, the only
one left that feels true. Her name turns out to be Shelly, exactly
the name he would have picked for her. No rings on her fingers, no
salt on her tail.
    When it’s meant to be it’s this simple.
    “I met my last boyfriend like this, only he
worked in a record store,” Shelly tells him. “I was looking for
John Denver and he made me buy Scarlatti. We were together for
eight years—”
    Her voice falls off, and Jack intuits recent
abandonment and betrayal by some aging hippie cad.
    “But then he moved into the Ashram?”
    “He had cancer and died,” she says in a flat
voice.
    She has turned to go, but he can’t let her
get away, not when he needs her so.
    “I can’t believe someone as attractive and
intelligent as you isn’t married.”
    Another mistake, he realizes too late; Gita
has told him that women find the implications insulting, not that
he can figure out why.
    Shelly does not take offence. Instead she
turns his words over like a serious person.
    “It’s hard to meet men when everyone’s so
wrapped up in work. It was different back in grad school.”
    “There’s a Bergman festival at the Student
Union. We could catch The Seventh Seal tonight at 8. Then I’ll take
you to the Rathskeller. We’ll talk about Existentialism. What do
you say?”
    “Right,” says Shelly.
    She must think he’s making fun of her, but
he’s never been more sincere in his life.
    “OK, forget the existentialism, but I wasn’t
kidding about the Bergman Festival. Be there for me, what do you
say?”
    From the abstracted look on her face, a
middle distance stare, she could be weighing his soul according to
some private algorithm, or else thinking about what to make for
dinner.
    “Jack!” Gita screams from upstairs. “What’s
taking you so long?”
    “I’ll think about it,” says Shelly.
    .
    Jack waits for Shelly in the lobby of the
Library between a series of posters extolling the virtues of South
Korea. The posters, which have the cheerful dowdiness of in-house
industrial graphics, feature a stubby smiling tiger wearing a hard
hat. Jack feels great fondness for the small but plucky tiger,
official mascot of Korea, with its broad shoulders and positive
mental outlook. Why do liberals hate Koreans? What’s wrong with
industry and simple gratitude? To work hard is good. To smile is
also good, even with broken teeth. A hardworking man is waiting for
his girl to show up so he can take her to the movies. What’s wrong
with that? And here she comes now, here comes little Shelly, all
bundled up in a pinkish down jacket. Waves of happiness hit
him.
    “Hi,” she says. “Sorry I’m late.”
    But she’s right on time.
    “You have this distinctive smell,” she says
as they walk to the movie.